00:21 CJ: Welcome to The Savvy Musician Show. This is CJ Ortiz. I’m the branding and mindset coach here at the Savvy Musician Academy. Thanks once again for joining me on this premier music marketing podcast.

I’ve got something special in store for you today. I want to take you inside our Savvy Musician Inner Circle, where we do a live stream each Friday afternoon at 3:00 PM, where we go into teaching the depths of music marketing. I thought it would be a great idea to kind of give you an inside look at what happens in one of these private Facebook groups, so I’ve decided to share the first part of a brand new series I’m doing on copywriting for social media and email.

The game has changed. I’ll explain why in this particular session, but I think you’re going to get a lot out of it. And again, I want to give you a behind the scenes, look at some of the powerful things we’re doing here at the Savvy Musician Academy, specifically in the Savvy Musician Inner Circle, let’s go to that live stream right now.

I’m thrilled to be able to start this new series with you guys about copywriting, copywriting for social media and email. Put on your seatbelts, man. Copywriting for social media and email marketing. This first part, direct response marketing. That is the traditional term. Direct response marketing. It’s much, much different in the age in which we live now because social media and email are changing the game.

Now, email can be a tad bit different and we’ll get into that, obviously, but for the most part, social media has changed even that. Because now, things have become so personable, things have become such an issue of following, you are following certain people, that email becomes an extension of the first place that they originally met you, which is going to be on social media. So my, how things have changed. Writing great copy is different in the age of social media.

Why is that? Now, when I say different, we’re setting it off against traditional copywriting. Now, I was taught traditional copywriting. That’s where I cut my teeth. Traditional copywriters never had to consider something like writing for social media because there obviously was no social media. They would have preferred it. You ask any marketer, they would say, “If we’d have had something like this back in the day to talk to people at this level, target people at this level, personally,” they would have loved it.

Traditional copywriters never had to consider writing for social media, especially when it’s a personal brand. Okay, now, again, this is different. What’s the opposite of a personal brand? Well, that would be an impersonal brand. Well, what is an example of an impersonal brand? Well, that would be Coca-Cola, Nike, Amazon, Apple. They are impersonal brands. When you see the Facebook page of any one of those corporations, you’re not talking to the CEO every day like say, your fans will talk to you every day.

You are a personal brand. So traditional copywriting never really had to deal with personal brands before because traditional copywriting was always anonymous. The person that was writing the copy was not even an employee of the corporation. Those who are writing copy are typically outside agencies that are being hired. So traditional copywriting is anonymous. Traditional copywriting is focused on trying to get strangers to act immediately, right? It’s direct response.

So they’re trying to get you to act immediately when they don’t have a whole lot of time to create the know, like, and trust element. They don’t have a lot of time. You get the piece of mail, they’ve got seconds to lure you in to read what’s inside that envelope. Most of the time, you just throw the envelope away, right?

Traditional copywriting also does not create longterm relationships. So the copy that you read in a sales letter or something like that is not copy that’s designed to carry you to the next letter they’re going to send you. So they’re not finishing that letter by saying, “Hey, look forward to our letter coming next week.” They’re not trying to cultivate a longterm relationship with you. They’re trying to make a single sale in one item, in one marketing device. Okay?

So the kind of copywriting that we’re doing is different. We’re not going for the sale on the first time out. We’re not trying to sleep with the girl on the first date, right? We’re trying to build a relationship. So that has an effect on the copy.

05:09 CJ: Social media is changing the way we need to think about writing copy. It’s changing the way we need to think about it. So some of your copy is going to involve sales, obviously. Some of your copy is going to involve storytelling, right? Sharing that personal stuff. Some of your copy is going to involve conversation.

So it’s going to be so much different than traditional copywriting, but just because it is doesn’t mean we don’t need to be focused on traditional copywriting or the principles that govern it. Writing copy for your personal brand on social media and email is going to require modifying traditional copywriting. But you must still understand the fundamentals in order to know why.

So again, I hope I’m getting this point across that we’re now writing. Our copywriting is for personal branding. You are not a corporation. You are not a store. You are a personal brand. Even if you’re in a band, you’re in a personal brand situation. And this is social media, so it’s not one sales item, one marketing piece that you’re sending them. You are leading them into a relationship.

Not underhanded, I’m talking about something sneaky. I’m just saying, they’re being led along a customer journey, right? So you’re going to have this ongoing relationship, so that needs to inform how you write your copy. But you still need to understand the fundamentals of traditional copywriting because they’re going to weave in and out.

So the key here is now positioning yourself. See, so many other elements go into copywriting and it’s going to be important that you keep that in mind. We’ll talk about that. Images, all of this. Everything goes into the positioning of your personal brand and that informs together, they are one message. I’m not trying to separate copy just because we’re talking about copywriting doesn’t mean images aren’t important. We’re not going to talk about video. We’re not going to talk about other things. No, they all work together.

I’ll talk about them together. The emphasis is going to be on copy, but I’ll be talking about images and video and all that sort of stuff, because it works together. I want you to see these things as working together.

It’s like exercise, right? If you’re a bodybuilder, you train body parts in isolation. But what you’re going to hear a lot about today, for example, now, is functional training, which means doing functional movements. Because you’re not just trying to build muscle with functional training, you’re trying to strengthen yourself to handle the more common, functional aspects of life.

So the movements involved now, what they call compound movements. A compound movement is when you’re doing a training that involves multiple body parts, not just one. So you’re not just isolating a curl, for example. You’re doing a squat or a deadlift that involves both the back and the arms and the shoulders and the quads, all of these sorts of things, right?

It’s a compound. It’s made up of many body parts doing the movement, not just one. So what I’m talking about his compound training here. Even though we’re emphasizing copywriting, it’s going to be involving multiple aspects because they work together in your marketing and I don’t want you to see them in isolation. I don’t want you to see copy divorced from images and vice versa.

Okay, so great copy takes into consideration the positioning of a product or person. Great copy is going to take into consideration the positioning of a product or person. You can’t write your copy if you don’t know who you are. You can’t write your copy if you’re not sure about your brand, sure about your positioning. So positioning is another word for effective branding. I prefer the word positioning to branding, but I’m going to use branding because that’s what people understand.

The problem I have with the word branding is branding implies something that seen. Okay, branding implies something that’s seen. So if I say “brand,” people think logo, cereal box, soup can label, right? Website. That’s what they think of when they think of branding. The decals on the side of a work truck. That’s what they think when they think of branding, they think of something seen.

No, those are all manifestations of branding. But branding is something that happens in the mind. That’s what branding is. It’s an indelible, unerasable mark, right? You brand a cattle, you burn into their skin, a brand, a mark. It’s an image you cannot erase. Same thing that actual branding, it’s something that gets stamped onto the mind of your potential marketplace that cannot be erased. But that’s also the positioning that your personal brand holds. It’s the position you hold in your potential marketplace.

Positioning, therefore, must inform your copywriting. You want to position yourself, which means to determine the most beneficial function of something directed at the ideal customer for it, right? If you want to position yourself, it means determine the most beneficial function of something directed at the ideal customer for it.

10:26 CJ: So what’s the most beneficial function of your personal brand, right? It’s obviously music, inspiration, other types of things. All of these things work together. That’s the beneficial function. In other words, the function of your personal brand that causes a benefit in the ideal customer. That’s positioning. Those are the two things you want. You want to fully understand your most beneficial function directed at your most ideal customer. That’s how you are positioned.

Now, half the battle here, half the battle of great copywriting is audience targeting. Now, that may sound obvious at the outset, but a lot of people don’t think of it this way. Great copy is only great when it’s directed at the right person, whose life would be most changed by the benefit of what you offer. Okay?

So somebody could send me something, like some little doodad for my house. I don’t really need it. I guess it’ll help out, but it’s not really something I’m thinking about. It’s not a pressing problem. I mean, it kind of helped, but not really. I don’t really care. So great copy is only going to be great when it’s directed at the right person, whose life would most be changed by the benefit of what you offer. That’s your ideal customer, the person who’s going to most going to benefit from what you’re offering.

So think of musical genre way, think of micro niche that way. Think of your personal brand and what you post that way. What you say in your email, think of it that way. Great copy is directed at the person whose life would most be changed by the benefit of what you offer.

So you’ve probably, for example, thrown away a ton of great sales copy that you’ve never even read. You’ve thrown away tons and tons of great, well-written sales copy simply because when you opened your mailbox and saw the sales envelope, it was from a company selling something you don’t need. Great sales copy, phenomenal sales copy. And you threw it in the trash. Why? Because what you saw from the envelope, from the direct mail piece, it doesn’t apply to you. Or from the email, it really doesn’t apply to you. So you never read it.

What good is great copy if it’s not targeted to the right people, right? Half the battle is audience targeting, I’ll make the point even more so. But if someone sent you something that could solve your most pressing problem, how good would their copy really need to be?

Couldn’t they just say, “If you’re struggling with blank, call us at 1-800 We Fix It for a free consultation.” So long as that blank is something that’s one of your most pressing problems, you’re listening now. And the copy doesn’t need to be as good, does it?

Literally, somebody could get somebody’s response right there alone. If you’re struggling with blank, call me. Sure. Well, you say, “No, that wouldn’t work CJ.” Oh, really? You find your most pressing problem, yeah. You’ll call me.

Imagine yourself with a toothache. A really, really bad toothache and it’s a Saturday night, midnight when it just starts to hurt you. And you’re like, “What am I going to do? I can’t get my dentist to do anything now.” And all of a sudden you see an infomercial on TV that says, “If you’re struggling with the toothache on a Saturday night at 12:00 and your dentist isn’t available and you want relief in the next 10 minutes, call now.” Don’t you think you’d call?

Yeah, because it’s about as relevant to a pressing problem as you could possibly get. We want to get as close as we can to that, but that’s half the battle. So how great does my copy need to be to get somebody to call? Not great. I just need to really amplify and describe their problem to them and they’ll call. Make sense?

Writing to create response. This is what this is. This is direct response marketing. David Ogilvy, one of the most famous and successful advertisers who have ever lived. He once wrote, “I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it creative. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.” For example, “When Aeschines spoke, they said, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, ‘Let us march against Philip.'”

15:09 CJ: He’s referring to the age of the rhetoric guys, back in ancient Greece. So one guy gets up, Aeschines, and he says his speech and everybody says, “Oh, well, how well this guy speaks, how wonderful, what a creative, wonderful speech. We all clap our hands.” When he gets up and speaks, they say, “let’s march against Phillip. Let’s take action.”

Direct response copywriting. It’s not about being flowery, friendly, creative or any of that stuff. I don’t give a damn about being creative. I want to be clear. And I want to cause direct response. I want to cause action to be taken. That’s what you want.

Think of some of the commercials that you love. Half the time it’s because they were funny or creative or something like that, but you don’t remember necessarily what was being sold or who was selling it. Doesn’t matter.

It’s far better to have the infomercial saying, “If it’s midnight and you’ve got a toothache and your dentist is nowhere to be found and you need pain relief in the next 10 minutes, call now.” You don’t give a damn about creativity or anything like that, right? It’s copy directed at you to create a response. You’re writing to create response, which is why it’s called direct response. We want a direct response, not a general response, a direct response. That’s marketing.

Ogilvy also said, “Every copywriter should start his career by spending two years in direct response.” Well, that’s what you’re doing. That’s why Leah said that even if you don’t have a career in music, if you go through the elite course, for example, you can have a career writing copy. You can have a career in direct marketing, because you’re going to know how to sell anything.

You could sell your marketing services. That’s reason enough to go through Super Fan System Elite Program, because not only can you sell your music, but you can get a whole bunch of clients that you could market to. Think about that one.

Benefits versus features. Benefits versus features. See, every product has a feature, right? I have a microphone here. It has certain features. I can look through the manual and look at all the technical features of this. I don’t care about it. I’m interested in the benefits. How will it make me sound? Can it be plugged into this? How much is it? I want to know more specific things relating to me.

Direct response marketing relies upon you targeting the right audience with benefit-driven copy. Direct response marketing is targeting the right audience with benefit-driven copy. Not feature-driven, benefit-driven.

This means understanding the difference between benefits and features. Some people still get these two confused. So nearly three quarters of people who read information that is helpful to them, it’s going to be information that tells them about something. They read information that’s helpful to them. They don’t read information that’s a description about something. They’re not interested so much in product information. They’re interested in benefits. So when people will read copy and keep reading it, it’s because it keeps telling them what it’s going to do for them.

If all you get into is a description of product and service, people are going to start checking out. Even if you are mentioning features, they have to be phrased in a way that’s a benefit. Again, go back to the microphone here. You say this particular technical feature will give you the warm sound you’ve always dreamed of. Sound like other professional radio and podcast performers with this new PR-40 microphone from Heil.

People want to know how you can help them. How you can make them feel better, right? People are after two things. Pleasure, gaining more pleasure, or getting rid of pain. It’s the two things they want. They want to gain pleasure, or they want to get rid of pain. Doesn’t matter what it is. That’s their primary motives in life. So it doesn’t matter what you’re selling, what you’re offering, what you’re doing, what you’re communicating. It’s got to be addressing one of those two things, helping them gain pleasure or helping them avoid pain.

So it’s all about relationship building. I’m going to cover more depth in this series, but here’s what you got to keep in mind. Great copy will play a major part in your branding as well as the relationship that you build with your fans.

And I can’t emphasize the relationship aspect enough. You can’t create relationship with mechanics. It doesn’t work. Just like you began with theory and technique in becoming a musician, you create art when you become one with them. So the problem students have is that they’re focused on the technology and the technique and so they expect results quicker than they should.

20:06 CJ: And I see this all the time. I’ve seen it this week in the Facebook groups. People are expecting results quicker than they should. And the reason being is because they don’t have a relationship established. So that is going to be affected, obviously, by copy. They haven’t created that relationship yet.

You see, because everything that you’re learning right now, think of it, whether it’s e-commerce or creating a mailing list or opt-ins or running ads for page likes or boosting posts or anything that you do online, that you’re learning from the Savvy Musician Academy.

Think of them like when you took piano classes or when you took guitar lessons or whatever it may be. Remember when you learned the rudiments? Remember how mechanical everything was? And then think how long it took for you to get to the place where you weren’t thinking so much about that anymore and it was morphing into art. You weren’t thinking so much about those things. It was more focused on art.

Well, it’s the same thing here. So when I see somebody who’s been in, for example, our Elite course, and they get to the eCom Blitz and they start that, or the opt-ins and they start that, the next thing you know, they’re like, “I’m not getting any results.” So then they go back into the group and they post, “Hey, other Elite students. Why don’t you share with me what you guys did for your nurture emails? Show me what you guys did for your eCommerce blitz. What kind of results did you get? How much are your ads? Can I see your ads?” Et cetera, et cetera.

They’re trying to find out what the problem is. The problem is you’re trying to create art and you’re still dealing with the fundamentals. You’re still dealing with technique. Your people aren’t ready to buy yet. You’re learning stuff and I know you want to make money and I know you want to turn this thing quickly, but you haven’t built the relationship yet. So it’s just not going to work. It’s very mechanical. And so you expect results a little bit too quickly.

That’s why I’m always telling you, the majority of what we’re dealing with. It has more to do with the personal, not so much the software, not so much the methodology.

You think, “Okay, I I did my fan frenzy. I’ve got this many fans now. I’ve done some posting, I’ve done some Facebook lives and now I’m retargeting that few hundred people. I’ve got 300 people on my email list and I’m ready for my album launch. I’m ready for my whenever.” You’re not ready.

You’re not ready and that’s okay. This is longterm, what we’re building. It’s important that you learn all of this. Which is why I think the Savvy Musician Inner Circle was so important because I needed a way to do a little more personal coaching because I can’t talk to everybody, there’s just too many of you. But I needed a way to focus on the things where I see people are struggling and through this sort of format of both teaching, as well as answering questions and that sort of thing, I can focus in on the areas where I see people struggling.

So again, I’m watching what’s happening in the Facebook groups. I don’t comment on everybody’s posts. I got my stuff to do, too y’all. But I see what people are saying and I know what the problem is. You can look at everybody else’s email campaigns, everybody else’s ads, everybody else’s ad manager, everybody else’s cost per click. You could look at everybody else’s results and it’s not going to make a difference. Your audience isn’t buying because they’re not ready to buy yet.

And the reason why they’re not ready to buy yet is not because they don’t have money. They’ll turn their nose at your t-shirt ad or your CD offer and then later that night buy a bunch of pizza and beer. It ain’t about money. It’s about desire. You haven’t created desire yet. You’re trying to sleep with your Tinder date on the first time you go out. You got to build the relationship. You got to build the relationship. Does that make sense? I hope it does.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this special podcast featuring the live stream from our Savvy Musician Inner Circle. If you’d like to get your feet wet in marketing, or if you’d like to just get plugged in to a place where you can learn the lingo, learn more about the software, learn more about the techniques of copywriting and email and graphics and branding and positioning, all of the wonderful stuff that will help you move your music business forward, I encourage you to sign up today for the Savvy Musician Inner Circle.

You can learn more at savvymusicianacademy.com/innercircle. It’s just $27 a month and I think your music career is worth that much. Also, if you’d like, you could leave a review for this podcast. We certainly encourage that. It’s a great way to help other musicians like yourself discover the Savvy Musician Academy. Plus, we read all of your comments so it’s a great way for us to get insight from you, how the podcast is affecting you, what needs to be said. And of course, it’s a huge encouragement for us so please do that today.

25:14 CJ: And again, thank you for all the wonderful support that you give us here at the Savvy Musician Academy. I’ll be with you next time on The Savvy Musician Show. Take care.

The entire music industry just changed overnight. Suddenly, every band and musician has had their live gigs canceled indefinitely. No one knows when live events are coming back. When they do, the competition will surely be fierce. Artists are realizing they have to pivot quickly if they want to earn an income with their music. Musicians are now scrambling to figure out how to sell their music online. They need answers and they need them now.

If this is you, then discover our new Savvy Musician Inner Circle membership. It’s a private subscription-based coaching group to help you launch and market your online music business fast. For one low monthly subscription, you’ll get live weekly marketing instruction plus tips, tools, news updates, and your questions answered. It all takes place in a private Facebook group that I, CJ Ortiz, will be hosting and I’d love to help you build your online music business. To learn more, go right now to savvymusicianacademy.com/innercircle.